Exceptional, Exciting, Enthralling – The One With It All, Infusion ’18!

Exceptional, Exciting, Enthralling – The One With It All, Infusion ’18!

Calling the life in an IIM a roller coaster would be, at any given point in time, an understatement. Call up any of your acquaintances in IIM during the peak hours (which is usually post-midnight) and ask them about their life, they will have only one statement for you; I hate it but I love it. The sheer breadth and depth of the activities that one gets to perform here are on a superhuman scale. For instance, drawing upon my own experience, when I joined IIM Rohtak I learnt more accounting before my first ever finance class (thanks to our pre-reads) than what a usual commerce aspirant learns in his entire school years. This, while I was familiarising myself with Mr. Kotler with regression analysis and product life cycles poking me from both sides was no mean feat for me at that time. Yet, the magnanimity of an IIM truly becomes prominent when the horns of their annual fests are blown. That is when the already skewed sleep cycle of its students goes for a toss!

The above line seems cliched, doesn’t it? After all, one only needs to go to ‘dare2compete’ to see that there is absolutely no dearth of competitions. With privatisation of education colleges such as b-schools and T-schools have proliferated like green moss on the damp earth. I thought the same when I came to know of my college’s annual event- Infusion 2018. “What’s so special about it anyway”, I thought. How is it any different from the hundreds (if not more) of other fests out there? On top of it, the theme for this year’s fest was – Exceptional, Exciting and Enthralling.

I had one question – How?

Being an IIM Kathor (‘Rohtak’ spelled backwards), I did the one thing that had been ingrained in me since day zero – data crunching. Go to previous year records, see its facts and figures, talk to the organising committee for this year, sifting through all their bias and find out the raw facts, collate and analyse. So, was it ‘Exceptional, exciting and enthralling’?

There are roughly 5500 b-schools in India operational at the moment. 1% of this figure would be around 55 b-schools. Yet, not even this many of them hold anything even remotely similar to one of the most celebrated events in Infusion- The ‘Yuva Parliament’. A scenario where the shortlisted pan-India candidates are assigned various ministries and are made to deliberate on a bill which is also being currently debated in the parliament and are made to arrive at a common ground. Inputs from all the ‘pseudo’ ministries, be it finance, labour, railways or any other, are taken into consideration and thoroughly dissected before a solution is aimed at. And did I forget to mention the internal politics between the ‘ruling’ party and ‘opposition’ party with neither letting the other take the upper hand? If this is not exceptional in a b-school fest, do tell me what is.

The cornucopia of events associated with one of the biggest b-school fests in North India is what makes Infusion@IIMRohtak exciting. The vast spectrum of events, from sports, fashion shows, management case studies, music, dance among others is what keeps the life of this fest always at an all-time high. Name your hobby and Infusion will have something or the other to offer you. But this sheer number of events is not the only aspect worth noticing. The IIM standard associated with it compliments its vast diversity of events. Irrespective of the event, the one thing one is sure to find here is excellence. The lure of ‘winning it in an IIM’ attracts students from every corner of the land like moths to a flame – it is simply irresistible. This is why only the best get to compete in the final stage,
showcasing their well-polished moves and most refined talents and going home with the big prize. Evidence to support this claim is clearly visible when one observes the increasing trend in participation numbers year-on- year with industrial recognition given to the management events by granting them sponsorship and sending their own case studies as a final round affair.

Can it get more captivating than this? From seeing a full-split in the dance competitions to watching the Magnus effect in real time in a football match- you never know what you might see in Infusion. Thinking of taking a helping hand from competitor analysis and Mr. Kotler for the marketing case study? One question – what makes you think no one else is doing the same thing? And, if you do think someone else is doing it, then is doing it really going to bell it for you? So, what are you going to do? ‘To hold spellbound’ is what Merriam-Webster describes ‘enthralling’ stands for. Infusion is just that.

At IIM Rohtak we learn to better versions of ourselves each passing day. Since we are already the crème-de-la-crème, our only competitor is us ourselves. This forms the core DNA of our very selves which is reflected profoundly in our flagship event of the year – Infusion, the One with it ALL.